Near-Surface Characterization for Expeditionary & Homeland Defense

In the past, military geology has provided scattered, non-uniform, partial data sets of near-surface properties which include some of the geologic, geophysical, and geotechnical soil properties required for force protection and/or force projection operation planning globally.

Recently however, expeditionary and homeland defense needs in a net-centric, rapidly transforming, high tech military have generated new demand for rapid but complete, near-surface characterization.

For example, the success of near-surface geophysical techniques such as ground-penetrating radar (GPR), electromagnetic induction (EMI), resistive imaging (RI), and magnetic profiling (MP) in investigations of surface and near-surface environments is critically dependent on several different properties of the geo-environment.

We discuss how military geology in the 21st Century must begin to assume responsibility for rapidly determining material properties such as the magnetic susceptibility, electrical conductivity, clay mineralogy, density, heat capacity, thermal conductivity, salinity, grain size distributions, and in situ moisture content and densities in complex rural and urban environments.